Nickel and Dimed

This book uncovers a part of life that has been masked by members of the upper-middle class and beyond. It is an eye opener to the struggles people, including college students, are having to deal with everyday and the way they cope. Although Ehrenreich was fortunate to have a safety net, the people she was trying to understand didn’t. It did bother me a little the way she gave herself allowances. I did find it a little offensive and exploitive because she always knew what she had to go back to. At times I felt like she was using the less fortunate situation for her own benefit. People rely on public transportation everyday, she made it seem like only poor people use public transportation as if it was so terrible. Though she does empathize with the people around her like her co-workers who can’t afford rent and live in hotels or trailers. Ehrenreich did an excellent job in showing that without basic shelter and standard of living everything else in their lives are effected and therefore can never move up the ladder, somewhat like a feudal system. Everything from time and cost of commute to sleep to lack of stove or refrigerator sometimes leads to starvation. I may not agree with how she went about this book but the story is great and it is a real eye opener to what working class America is really like. My first year transferring I decided to go to Arizona State University with no help financially. I worked full time, went to school full time all with no car in the Arizona summer. I got a huge dose of reality that semester and I didn’t want to live on the edge. I was constantly worrying about something whether it was rent, bills, food or out of state tuition. I decided to move back with my parents in California where I didn’t have to live as the working class citizen and just as a student. I found an article related to college students at the University of Washington that are using food banks because they just can’t afford to buy food with the near 5 percent increase in the price of groceries in the past year. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=5451082